Campbell tracks political and security developments across sub-Saharan Africa.

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The opening ceremony of the 22nd Ordinary Session of the African Union summit in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa, January 30, 2014 (Courtesy Reuters/Negeri).

This is a guest post by Jason Warner. He is a PhD candidate in African Studies at Harvard University, serving as a U.S. Government Boren National Security Fellow in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Late January in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia brings waves of impenetrable traffic, pan-African flags adorning the central Bole Road, and scarcely a vacant room in the city’s infamously hotel-filled landscape. The cause: the semi-annual African Union (AU) Heads of State Summit, which this year began on Friday, January 23. As the AU’s most important annual meeting kicks into high gear this week, here are some of the more pressing questions that observers and participants will have on their minds. Read more »

A group of 104 sub-Saharan Africans on board a rubber dinghy reach out for life jackets tossed to them by rescuers of the NGO Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) some 25 miles off the Libyan coast in this handout photo provided by MOAS October 4, 2014. MOAS, a privately-funded humanitarian initiative, began operating at the end of August and has assisted in the rescue of some 2,200 migrants crossing from Libyan shores towards Europe.
(MOAS/Darrin Zammit Lupi/Handout via Reuters)

This is a guest post by Amanda Roth, a former intern for the Council on Foreign Relations Africa Program. She is a graduate student at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, where she studies international security policy. Read more »

Citizens of Mali protest during the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) meeting, where the Mali crisis and Guinea-Bissau coup are discussed, in Abidjan April 26, 2012. (Luc Gnago/Courtesy Reuters)

What is “Africa?” Nomenclature raises difficult issues. Maps in school rooms show “Africa” as a distinct continent, the second largest in the world. But the U.S. Department of State assigns North Africa –the states of the Mediterranean littoral (Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco), to its Near East bureau– not its Africa bureau. On the other hand, the Department of Defense’s African Command (AFRICOM) includes Africa’s Mediterranean littoral with most of the rest of the continent in its area of responsibility. The international consulting organization McKinsey & Co. included North Africa in its aggregated data on Africa in its well-known report Lions on the Move, the results of which would have been different absent the relative economic powerhouses of the Mediterranean littoral. The Libyan dictator Qaddafi famously tried to pose as an “African”—not Middle Eastern– leader, and he bankrolled the African Union. The Council on Foreign Relations follows the Department of State’s usage. Read more »

Expelled African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) President Julius Malema (R) and South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe gesture during an ANCYL rally in Limpopo province March 25, 2012. (Siphiwe Sibeko/Courtesy Reuters)

This is a guest post by Jim Sanders, a career, now retired, West Africa watcher for various federal agencies. The views expressed below are his personal views and do not reflect those of his former employers.

Events in Mali are very likely to be seen mainly as an outgrowth of those in Libya, but the heavy focus on reversing the coup, with less on the partition of the country, is stunning in its neglect of a more basic issue: namely, Western preoccupation with the trappings of democracy, e.g., elections, constitutions, etc., rather than its substance. The ease with which the country’s president was ousted and half the country’s territory lost, indicates a very weak government, lacking its population’s support and confidence. Read more »

Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi (C) leans on the shoulders of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak (centre R) and President of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh (centre L) as they laugh during a photocall before the second Afro-Arab Summit in Sirte October 10, 2010. (Asmaa Waguih/Courtesy Reuters)